MUSICA ELECTRONICA

The first electronic musical instrument was invented in 1874 by American Elisha Gray (1835–1901).

In early 1874, Gray saw his young nephew plugging several electrical circuits containing batteries and a vibrating metal strip into a bathtub, causing an audible hum as the circuits were opened and closed. In fact, Gray's nephew accidentally devised a primitive method of transmitting electrical vibrations produced by the spring-loaded metal strap.

Gray repeated the experiment in his laboratory and began researching a number of practical applications of this effect. One was the invention of a small keyboard instrument with enough single-tone "transmitters" to play an octave. He called it the “musical telegraph" and took the instrument with him on a concert tour to England in August and September 1874. At the end of the same year, he also produced a two-octave version. The instrument was polyphonic and was predating the first electric organ by sixty years.

The "Singing Arc" invented by Englishman William Duddell became a famous novelty at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Duddell tried to figure out a way to eliminate the high-pitched sound emitted by the carbon arc streetlights. In 1899, he realized that he could actually control those penetrating tones through a secondary circuit connected to an arc's direct current, to modulate and control the oscillations of the arc. Later Duddell had a keyboard added to his instrument. It was an example of a device with very simple voltage-controlled frequency modulation.